Autoresponders

Autoresponders

Hi everyone, it’s safe to say that if your serious about starting an internet business then one day you will need an autoresponder like the one shown by the video above

But what is an Autoresponder?

An autoresponder is a computer program that automatically returns a prewritten message to anyone who fills in a subscription form on a blog or other website.

Like the ones on this page (the static form and the pop-up one.) Autoresponders are widely used by Web sites for the purpose of responding to visitor comments and suggestions or to direct subscribers to sales pages.

Why use an Autoresponder?

Autoresponders are very useful and effective tools to keep in touch with your many subscribers whether daily, weekly or monthly.

Autoresponders provide not only cost savings but especially time efficiencies, ensuring that all of your customers are responded to at any time you desire.

They save huge amounts of time. Instead of crafting individual email letters to each and everyone of your subscribers or customers all you need do is design a template letter that an Autoresponder sends to every individual on your list. And it can be set to be sent at the time you want or as many times as you want.

Personally I’m a fan of autoresponders as a means of easily, systematically and automatically turning subscribers into customers.

As a business owner you’re looking to find simple ways of encouraging your prospects to come back to you and make purchases again and again and autoresponders allow you to set up a few emails and responses, select a schedule and sit back while your communications are sent out at specified times to encourage your customers to make repeat purchases. Although there are a number of different auto responder companies, I’m a fan of both Aweber and Mailchimp for a number of reasons.

But as we said, the list of Autoresponder companies include,

Constant,Contact, AWeber, MailChimp,

OfficeAutoPilot, Infusionsoft,

and some others.

One of the main things we look for in an autoresponder package is to determine if it’s user friendly. That is, it needs to be functional but easy to understand and use – otherwise you waste a lot of time on the tool instead of the blog!

Another important factor to consider is the cost of the service.

iContactResponder

Over a million businesses are currently using iContact as their autoresponder service. They offer a free trial to let you familiarise yourself with their system. In fact their team earned a “global call centre of the year” award.

As your subscribers grow iContact can provide a Premium service to help support you develop your online marketing expertise.

They also offer hundreds of different templates for your email message presentations and they also have a message builder wizard that guides you through the process, but if needs be you can always call support for help..

However it’s the interface that lets iContact down. It’s not user-friendly and takes a good while to learn how to use it effectively – which can cause frustration and effectively cause you to look at alternatives.

However there are loads of other attributes to discover and overall they rank highly with other autoresponders to provide fast delivery of their products.

MailChimp

Mailchimp is possibly the second best choice for your autoreponder and one of the main reasons is because its free for your first 2.000 subscribers. This is a benefit if your subscriber list is small and your looking to keep costs to a minimum. But you need to keep in mind that for free customers Mailchimp doesn’t provide support.

That needn’t put you off because their interface is easy to navigate and easily integrates with PayPal, Twitter and Facebook.

However, Mailchimp does everything other autoresponders do but keep in mind that for the free customers Mailchimp includes their icon on all of your email broadcasts. This might not be a big deal but it would be better to appear as if your blog was the one sending out the emails.

Nevertheless, Mailchimp is a good option for a start up business/blog and would provide good experience in the Autoresponder world.

OfficeAutoPilot

Rumour has it that its creator, Landon Ray

Landon Ray CEO of Ontraport

designed an email marketing tool for information marketers and took the best attributes of all other systems, and then added more functionality to make it the best Autoresponder. However, in doing so he made it one of the most expensive.

You can be paying upwards of $600 a month for the privilege of developing your subscriber list and this could put a lot of people off.

Suffice to say it has all the attributes of all the other Autoresponder services that I need not go through them all.

Infusionsoft

Infusionsoft is used more by businesses with more than 1500 subscribers.

But if you’re only going to send out newsletters now and then, or simply want to acknowledge your subscriber list periodically, MailChimp or AWeber are definitely more sensible options.

Infusionsoft has loads of different functions rolled into one package. It enables ecommerce, CRM, email marketing and automation of messages so you can set things rolling without checking in too often, and it has a strong interface that makes it easy to set up webforms, apply tags and edit your emails.

The staff have a strong reputation for customer service, and in fact after contacting them through a Facebook ad it wasn’t long before I received a phone call from the USA to make human contact with me.

Once again Infusionsoft does much (if not all) that other autoresponders do but with huge difference of cost – see chart below.

AWeber

Most online marketers recognise Aweber as the leader in the Autoresponder business. I’ve used it and found it to be the best software for building my customer database – and that’s what we use autoresponders for!

The main thing to know about AWeber is that it’s interface is very simple and clear, only giving you what you need to create your campaigns, schedule them, and set them going. It features simple integration with most of the social media such as Facebook, Twitter and others.

The first month is free – then only $19 thereafter.

AWeber’s main strength is its capacity for scheduling follow-up mails for customers. You can set up a series of messages that will be sent out to new subscribers at specific periods of time, and the delay between each email is scheduled according to when the last one was sent. This means that thousands of customers can join at any point, and still be given the right delay between updates.

See this Aweber Video about Email Campaigns

Automate Your Email Marketing with AWeber Like all good products, Aweber’s interface is very user friendly and doesn’t take long to understand and use – and it has a number of short, simple videos that you can play over and over again until you master some feature your studying.

And one thing stands out -the AWeber team offer great customer support for any queries.

Overall, AWeber is an excellent option for people familiar with the email marketing basics, and is the favourite of mine.

Autoresponder Comparisons

Comparing Autoresponders

Chosen Your Autoresponder?

I hope this information helps you see the benefit of autoresponders and helps you choose one. Why not subscribe to the blog so as to receive future reports on more resources to help your online presence?